Revista de conductas, terapia y rehabilitación adictivas

The First mHealth App for Managing Cannabis Use: Gauging its Potential Helpfulness

Melissa M Norberg, Sally E Rooke, Lucy Albertella, Jan Copeland, David J Kavanagh and Annie Y S Lau

The First mHealth App for Managing Cannabis Use: Gauging its Potential Helpfulness

Cannabis use disorder is both common and costly. The impact of standard services for treating cannabis use and related problems has been inhibited by supply, accessibility, and perceived stigma. Thus, private, readily accessible methods of delivering evidencebased treatment on a large scale and at low cost are urgently needed. Accordingly, we developed the first mHealth smartphone app for managing cannabis use (Assess, Plan, Track, Tips; APTT). This study examines 10 cannabis users’ (50% men, aged 17-38) reactions to APTT after participating in a 2-hour in-house testing session. Eligibility criteria required participants to be interested in evaluating, reducing, or ceasing their cannabis use. Participants were satisfied with APTT overall, but rated its ease of use slightly higher than its helpfulness. Specifically, participants gave higher ratings of its goal monitoring and tracking of cannabis use than of its ability to increase insight and provide motivation or strategies to address cannabis use. Qualitative responses suggested that the helpfulness of APTT may be increased by providing more information about harms from using cannabis and benefits of quitting, clarifying how strategies for use reduction might be applied to different situations such as withdrawal, and incorporating professional assistance. These results will assist in determining what changes need to be made to APTT in order to ensure that it is evidence-based and user preferred.